Door construction



1933- w. A. MEADOWS DOOR CONSTRUCTION Filed March 24, 1930 2 Sheets-Sheet l 1933. w. A. MEADOWS DOOR CONSTRUCTION Filed March 24, 1930 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Patented Oct. 24, 1933 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE Application March 24,

1 Claim.

This invention relates to an arrangement of doors in combination with control means to open and close the same.

In motor truck service stations, it is found desirable to provide a partitioned space forming a room where a truck can conveniently be knocked down and repaired without scattering the parts all over the station, to prevent misplacement of parts. As such service stations are usually busy places and must utilize every available square foot of space, such rooms are usually arranged in a corner. As a result, difficulty is immediately encountered when providing door openings to maneuver a truck into and out of the room.

Accordingly it is the primary object of this invention to provide side doors for such a room, which doors are disposed to form a right angle, whereby a corner opening results to achieve comparatively easy ingress and egress for the motor vehicle.

Another object of the invention is to provide motor means for operating the doors to open and close the same.

Other objects will be apparent to those skilled in this art as the disclosure is more fully made.

An example of a practicable embodiment of the invention is shown in the accompanying sheets of drawings, wherein:

Figure 1 is a side view of the improved struc ture;

Figure 2 is a plan view; and,

Figure 3 is a detail view of the gear reducer and a part of the pulley and cable system.

Two walls of a room are shown at 10, which walls, as appears from Figure 2, are right angularly disposed and stop short of the corner the necessary distance to provide a corner door opening, as will be readily understood. A pair of right angularly disposed doors 11 and 11' are suitably hung for sliding movement to provide a closure for the corner opening.

At a convenient place and preferably adjacent the corner opening, the ceiling of the service station may be provided with a suitable hanger 12 to carry a platform 13, as shown in Figure 1, which platform serves as a support for areversible electric motor 14. The motor shaft 15 drives a gear reducer 16, also carried on the platform, said reducer driving a shaft 17, the protruding ends of which carry and drive large pulley wheels 18, 19. An endless cable 20 is trained around the pulley 18 and also around a second pulley 21, the lower run of the cable being appropriately made fast, as at 22, to the door 10.

Similarly, an endless cable 23 is trained around the'pulley 19, the upper and lower runs of said cable 23 making a right angular turn through the mediary of upper and lower idler pulleys 24 carried on a vertical shaft 25 supported in a suit- 60 able manner on the platform 13, as best shown 1930. Serial No. 438,406

in Figure 3. The lower run of the cable is secured at 26 to the door, the cable passing around an end-pulley 27, as shown in Figure 2.

I The electric motor 14 is controlled by a switch box 28 having three buttons 29, 30 and31, which control circuits in the conduit 32 for driving the motor ahead, reverse, or to hold the same idle. The switch box is conveniently carried on a support 33.

In practice, suitable obstacles will be located at the terminal ends of the door opening, which obstacles will be contacted by the door in a well known manner, to throw out the motor and stop the door movement. Such obstacles, as known in the art, would assume the form of trip levers to throw a limit switch to control the motor.

In operation, the motor 14 is controlled by the buttons on the switch box 28 to drive the motor ahead for opening the doors, the same moving right angularly apart to present a relatively large corner door opening, thus simplifying the task of maneuvering a truck or the like into the room. The reverse switch button causes the motor to drivethe doors reversely to close the same. The motor can be cut out to hold the doors stationary in any position desired. If an obstruction should accidentally get into the track of the moving doors, the cables will slip over the pulleys and thus prevent damage to the doors or driving parts. This is a real advantage and will be readily appreciated.

From this disclosure it will now be seen that structure is herein provided which achieves all of the desirable objects heretofore recited for the invention, and that the same is simple and not likely to get out of order.

It is to be understood that the invention may assume other forms in practice and that it is the intention to cover all such changes and modifications which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention, as is indicated by the definitions thereof comprising the appended claim.

What is claimed is:

Means for sliding a pair of vertical doors horizontally across a floor, said doors disposed at a right angle to each other in a corner entrance for a room, said means comprising an elevated platform supported near the tops of and adjacent the doors, a reversible motor carried on the platform, a gear reducer on the platform driven by the motor, two pulleys driven by said reducer, said pulleys arranged in parallelism at opposite sides of the reducer, a cable trained over one of said pulleys and connected to move one of the doors, a cable trained over the other pulley and connected to move the other door, pulley means on the platform for changing the direction of travel of the latter cable, and control means for the m r- WALTER A. MEADOWS. 

